caesura: A natural pause in a line of verse, sometimes roughly midway and usually denoted by punctuation. Regularly used alongside enjambment to give variety in the pacing of verse, and to avoid monotonous regularity. Also sometimes referred to as rhythmical pause.

carpe diem: A Latin term coined by the poet Horace, whichmeans 'seize the day'. The phrase suggests that as life is short one must grasp present pleasures. This motif is used in literature, and was especially popular with the Elizabethan lyric poets.

Chaucer, Geoffrey: Born around 1343, Chaucer died on 25 October 1400. He was an eminent author, poet and politician whose works most notably included the unfinished The Canterbury Tales. The tales are a compilation of stories written in the 14th century. Whilst two of them are in prose, the remaining twenty-two are in verse. Written in Middle English, the tales are told by a group of pilgrims on a pilgrimage from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.

chiasmus: In rhetioric, this refers to a structure which is otherwise parallel, yet the word order in each part is reversed.

chorus: A person or group of people which stand outside the action and remark upon it. Most tragedies in ancient Greece had a chorus of citizens or elders who, as representatives of the audience, react to the events. They are however powerless to affect the course of events.

classic: Three broad meanings include, firstly, works from ancient Greece or Rome ('classical' times). Secondly, a superior work from any age. Thirdly, a typical work e.g. Shakespeare's Hamlet might be described as a classic revenge play.

clause: In grammatical terminology, a clause is a word-construction containing a nominative and a predicate, i.e. a subject "doing" a verb. The term clause contrasts with the term phrase.

clerihew: A humorous poem or verse of 2 couplets about a person whose name acts as one of the rhymes.

cliché: A word or phrase that once had originality, but has now become exhausted through overuse, e.g. 'to turn over a new leaf'

climax: Indicates the arrival of any time of crucial intensity in a play or narrative. It is also a word used to show that particular moment when the rising action leads to a peak in the destinies of the hero or heroine.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: Born in England in 1772, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an influential Romantic poet. He is well regarded for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan. See romanticism.

colonialism: The term refers to the habit of powerful civilizations to "colonize" less powerful ones. The process can take many forms, including a literal geographic occupation, outright enslavement.

comedy: A work which is principally designed to amuse and entertain, and where, despite problems during the narrative, all ends well for the characters.

comedy of the absurd: Drama or performance which is satirical, ridiculous or a parady. Examples can be as diverse as A Midsummer night's dream, a Gilbert and Sullivan such as The Pirates of Penzance or even Monty Python's Flying Circus.

context: Indicates the place of a given passage or section of a literature in relation to the parts which immediately precede and follow it. More broadly speaking it can also indicate the social, historical and political backdrop in which the piece appeared.

contraction: The compression of sounds or words, for example don’t or isn’t.

contrapasso: Seen in Dante's Inferno and carries the idea of the punishment befitting the crime. In the version of Hell Dante visits, punishments are limited to what the sinners had done wrong on earth.

coursework: Essays or work done in a student’s own time, rather than in examination conditions. The mark from coursework contributes to a candidate's overall grade or qualification.

courtly love: A type of idealised love portrayed in literature of the Middle Ages. The lovers are always of a high social class, and their love is ennobling, although outside marriage.

Creole: A native language, which merges together the traits of several languages, i.e. an advanced and fully formed pidgin. In the American South, black slaves were taken from a variety of African tribes sharing no language. Thus, on the plantation they developed first a pidgin (limited and simplified) version of English with heavy Portuguese and African influences. This pidgin allowed slaves some rudimentary communication with each other and with their slave masters. In time, they lost their original African languages and the mixed speech became the native tongue of their children, a Creole.